Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

New Realism

Maurizio Ferraris

Manuel Carta talks with Prof. Maurizio Ferraris of the University of Turin, another leading exponent of New Realism.

Professor Ferraris, are there any keywords you’d like to give our readers to help them understand New Realism?

I’ll give you seven, one for each day of the week:

Individuals. Ontology (what there is) is only made up of individuals: this interview; a summer storm; the ant that runs across my table. Obviously, epistemology (what we know about what there is) speaks of ‘interviews’, ‘storms’, ‘ants’, using words and concepts that designate classes of things; but the classes to which these words refer do not exist except in thought.

Unamendability. The fact that individuals exist independently of thought is proven by the fact that they cannot be amended or corrected with the power of thought.

…